The Day the World Ended
by theblondeknight45
Summary: Yesterday was a normal day. The Eds' latest scheme failed and they felt the usual sting of defeat. Today, though, it seems like the entire world is falling apart. Can the Eds, or anyone for that mater, survive? A quick one-shot based on the "Purgatory Theory". R&R!


**This was just something short and simple I created in about an hour or so...I really find the Ed Edd n Eddy purgatory theory fascinating. Tragic, but fascinating above all else, at least to me. I would love some reviews! :)**

**I don't own Ed Edd n Eddy or the characters or even the "purgatory theory". Please enjoy.**

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><p>Ash and smoke filled the morning air when Edd awoke that fateful day. He drearily flickered his eyes open, then leaped out of bed when he picked up on the fact that his house was burning. He didn't bother taking his slippers or his robe, but he dashed down the steps and called out to his mother and father; no reply came and he called out louder and louder.<p>

The kitchen was devoured by flames and Edd backed up towards the opposite wall, desperately thinking of the best course of action, given that he could not reach the fire extinguisher in the kitchen. Smoke was funneling through from the hall as well and he knew that most of the first floor was already burning.

A tear welled up in his eye when he came to the conclusion a several seconds later that the house was a lost cause. He thought back to all the experiments and tests he'd done, all the long nights of studying, and of course all the schemes with his two best friends. Memories, however, would have to take a back seat to his own well-being.

He swung the door open and, to his immense horror, the neighborhood was equally charred and blazed on as fiercely as his house. Johnny ran through the street with Plank in hand, screaming and going in circles, crying out for salvation. Rolf was trying to navigate a way out of the inferno for his animals, but several were already dead.

"Come on, Jimmy!" Sarah called as the two darted past Double D's front door, the young brainiac taking in the scene with wide eyes and an open mouth.

He stumbled out onto the street, near where Johnny was frantically circling and shouting for help. Edd's house was more than halfway skinned by the fire, and the contents inside smoldered and faded into ash and cinders.

No house, car, bush, or tree was left unharmed by the monstrous flame as it tore through the cul-de-sac, almost like an intelligent creature that was so far beyond their meager lives that they could not comprehend the complexity of its nature or actions.

"Double D! What'll we do!?" A familiar voice in Ed called out, panicked and frightened in a way that Double D could scarcely recall seeing before.

"Ed! Eddy!" Double D answered as his friends rushed towards him. Eddy looked too scared to muster up much talking.

"What happened Double D? Has the monster Char-Gotha come to devour us and take us to the purgatory of the soul-sack?"

"I-I...I doubt it Ed, but….but goodness, we must already be in purgatory! Or the Apocalypse!" Edd answered and ran with them past Johnny, towards the Construction Site. It was not out of cognitive thought that they fled, but by natural instinct. They didn't speak to each other, nor did they truly acknowledge anything but the flames and the meager companionship they offered one another.

They did not make it far before they spotted Nazz, caught in a circle of flames. She had almost fainted from the massive storm of smoke and embers that assaulted her.

"It's Nazz!" Eddy managed squeak out, pointing worriedly at the young girl as she hacked wildly on her knees.

"What do we do?" Ed begged. Double D could do little more than shake his head and wonder the same thing.

They did not stop for long when Johnny's scream of agony and despair in the distance reminded them that the fire did not share their sense of chivalry or mercy. The entire street seemed to be a pool of fire, and sparks and embers and waves of flame lashed out violently, singeing anything that had miraculously avoided a burning death.

In the distance, Kevin hurried towards them as best he could, a large cut on his knee and a streak of blood running down his forehead into his eye. His bike was nowhere to be found, a remnant of a lost past that, though so recent, was so much more than an obsolete sacrifice upon the altars of fire raging around their world.

Nazz had finally given out and was lying, vulnerable and brittle, as the circle of fire seemed to lunge for her, like dogs of hell, starved and eager to take a bite out of unspoiled flesh.

"W-Well? Should we leave her?" Eddy asked, nearly jumping up and down in fear as Kevin ran by, as though he could not acknowledge Nazz or the Eds at all, only his impending death through fire.

"Let's go guys!" Ed whined and bit his fingers so intensely that they bled. Eddy took a few steps away and tugged on Double D's shoulder, for the young genius seemed transfixed by Nazz's funeral.

"Huh!? Oh, yes, we-we have to flee!" Edd agreed and ran off with his comrades.

They did not look back as the Earth under the neighborhood street died and opened up into a colossal quake that swallowed everything, it seemed, but the flames, which were spurned onward to chase after the Eds and any other soul that may have escaped the inferno. Nazz fell without any cries of pain, quietly disappearing into the deep void of darkness below.

The Eds were winded and out of breath by the time they fell into the sands of the Construction Zone. They all took shelter against the birm that was once the perimeter of the site, looking down at the sand and the dead visions of hope it told. Kevin had made it hardly farther, panting on his hands and knees in a pool of murk in the distance. His hat was missing now too, but once again he hardly seemed to notice the Eds.

"Where did all that fire come from?" Eddy gasped, "and why did this happen?" He sounded nothing like the devious little rascal that sought to scam the other kids out of their allowances only yesterday. Today, he was a survivor. He was for the time being.

"I can't fathom what caused this...perhaps a nuclear war? Maybe a vision of insanity suffered by those who were forsaken by their minds? I can't know…" Double D droned back wearily.

"It must be Char-Gotha, come to claim the prize of the Earth. He will cook us...and devour us with glee!" Ed cried, fully exacerbated.

Kevin still seemed to be oblivious to the Eds, but he got to his feet and hunched over to take a final moment or two of rest as the flames in the distance drew ever closer. No birds flew above them in the sky. No animals seemed to escape from the raging blazes. None of them could recall the cool feeling of a shower or the rejuvenative powers of a swimming pool.

"What are we going to do now?" Edd asked his companions, "I have no idea what the best option is at this point."

"We've got to get away from here, and I suggest somewhere far, far away!" Eddy proclaimed and stood up again, ready to run. Ed joined him in a moment and Double D a moment thereafter.

"Woah!" Kevin, almost ready to go on himself, hollered as an explosion to their left went off. It was far beyond the boundaries of the construction site, likely around the junkyard, and it was so massive that the bleak and gray clouds above were shattered and pushed away by the mushroom effect of the bang.

He wasted no time in leaving, running off again as fast as he could as another houndish flame storm pounced out to take them. The Eds followed Kevin as well as they could, but smoke and ash were infecting the lands as far, and farther, than they could see, and soon Kevin was lost in the storm.

They ran onwards, blind but desperate to escape their doomsday.

"Double D?" Eddy shouted amidst coughing, "Where'd you go? I can't see you! Or Ed!"

"I'm here Eddy!" Ed called out from beyond the screen of smoke and the snowfall of ash around him.

"We must go onwards," Edd interjected, "just keep...talking!"

"Where are we going? The school should be around here...somewhere!" Eddy noted and blinked in a strained effort to observe his surroundings.

"There is nowhere to run!" Ed announced with a terrifying voice.

"No! We'll make it! We have to!" Edd countered and went into a hacking cough as the filth of the fire infected his body and weakened him from within.

"Do you hear that?" Eddy asked, followed by a period of intent listening on all three of their parts.

In the distance an extremely muffled and sorrow-filled voice rang out, "Jimmy! Jimmy! Jimmy, where are you?!"

"Sarah!" Ed realized and began calling out to his sister.

"Ed?"

"Sarah! Sarah get closer!"

"Ed! I can't see anything! I lost Jimmy and-" Sounds of crying and an intense fear hit their ears for a moment, but then it seemed that Sarah vanished altogether.

"Sarah! Sarah are you there?" Ed yelled, trying to hold onto her sister somehow, but the flames had apparently claimed another victim, and would not hesitate to continue the cycle.

"We should have already reached the school by now, right? I don't think I've ever been so far away from the cul-de-sac!" Eddy called out to his friends.

"Nor I!" Double D affirmed, "We're running blind into the unknown. Be wary!"

"Sarah!" Ed called out again, completely ignoring his comrades.

No one shouted out for a while, as though they had lost all but the most basic levels of faith in their lives and each other. They went on, lifeless, blackened and tired out by the raging fires behind them, fixed in a constant chase.

The smoke and ash and embers that contaminated their air seemed to be blacker once, and they all began to notice that the smog around them was getting lighter, and their bodies more numb.

Eventually, Edd's foot reached what was, in his own mind, the end of the world. And he fell, he fell with a cry of intense and unholy fear in the unknown, and in the flames. Within a few seconds, Eddy cried out too, and Ed afterwards. They still could not see each other, and no matter how hard they tried, they could not tell whether or not the fire was gone, but the intense heat and spirit of the flames had surely not given up on them.

"Guys!" Eddy screamed out, unsure if his closest friends were even beside him as he continued to fall, "Guys! I think this is it!"

"We are all Char-Gotha's food now!" Ed cried out, tears apparently falling from his face, and it sounded as though they had been.

"It was a pleasure, gentlemen!" Double D managed to scream out before everything went silent and bright and all they could feel was the deep and unrelenting sting of the flames.

"Now another to be added," a voice of mystique and power noted as the Eds fell, "One more for pit and all is ready. No one can escape. No one is above suffering."

…

Double D flickered his eyes open as something caught his attention. He yawned lazily and took the warm covers off, shivering in the cold air that circulated through his house in the morning. He put on his slippers and grabbed his robe as he stepped over to his window.

Another few pebbles pelted the glass before Edd slid it open and poked his head out. Far below, Ed and Eddy were standing, awake and smiling, and waving their friend down. Double D rolled his eyes after a nod and slipped back inside.

His friends could be so amusing, and equally so, annoying at times. He supposed that was part of the reason he loved them so much. He took plugged in his Iphone on his desk and and went off to get as quick a bath as he could permit while Ed and Eddy waited for him outside.

He removed his clothes and slipped into the warm bath. He mulled over what new scam had been worked out for the day as the water soothed him and repaired him, as though he was recovering from some tragic event.

Who would they scam today? Johnny? Sarah and Jimmy? Leo? Leo? Who...oh, yes. The new kid on the street. He moved in….come to think of it, Edd wasn't quite sure when Leo moved in. But it wasn't long ago. He was sure of that.

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><p><strong>So for those who maybe didn't get it, basically...another kid was put into purgatory. That's also why the iPhone is mentioned, because, at least as I like to think, a new kid enters purgatory now and again, and the purgatory world develops along with the real one. So all the kids have iPhones and stuff, and now another kid lives with the cast, the faceless OC of mine, Leo. <strong>

**I enjoyed writing it anyways, ha ha! :) **


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